landscape allegory in postwar Westerns

What is it about?

My scholarship has already identified a narrative strategy in postwar westerns I refer to as the “duel in the sun” paradigm, wherein a psychologically conflicted male protagonist must ultimately confront his nemesis in a rocky enclosure peripheral to the frontier settlement or township. This particular form of landscape allegory, I argue, is traceable as far back as Duel in the Sun (1946), whose climax pits a half-Indian female protagonist (Jennifer Jones) against her would-be murderer/lover (Gregory Peck) in a remote desert enclosure known as “Squaw’s Head Rock.” The film rather artificially personifies racial intolerance in the characters of the rancher-patriarch (Lionel Barrymore) and his lawless son (Peck)—contrasted with his other son (Joseph Cotten) and their mother (Lillian Gish), who sympathize with protagonist’s indigenous heritage. At the same time, the film merely perpetuates racial stereotypes of association between Native Americans and ‘their’ primal instincts through the “half breed” female, struggling to overcome her sexual attraction to a rapacious outlaw and so serve the cause of law and order in white frontier society, that is, her ‘civilized’ other half. Her conflicting impulses can only be meted out in the craggy and precipitous “Squaw’s Head” domain—the outward manifestation of her inner psychological struggle. Although narrative circumstances vary, a similar psychological landscape allegory can be found in subsequent westerns, including Winchester ’73 (1950), Man of the West (1958), and The Shooting (1966), each of which culminates in a similar ‘duel’ between representatives of order and chaos.

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Photo by Taylor Brandon on Unsplash

Photo by Taylor Brandon on Unsplash

Why is it important?

My paper proposes to reevaluate and expand my former conclusions about these and other postwar westerns. For one, I also treat on The Searchers (1956), whose narrative and thematic structure bears much resemblance to that of Duel in the Sun, even as its characters are reconfigured somewhat. And yet I was strangely hesitant to allow its own climactic rocky desert enclosure to function in precisely the same way—as an environmental reflection of the male protagonist’s inner psychological conflict. And then my study overlooked Lonely Are the Brave (1962), an important entry in the larger pattern of landscape allegory appearing in postwar films. Another aspect of Duel in the Sun found in many other modernist films, although less obviously a component of subsequent “duel in the sun” westerns, is its Sisyphean allegory of physical struggle against the landscape itself. The allegory of psychological conflict is not only expressed through an inhospitable terrain, per se, but also through the protagonist’s physical attempts to navigate and/or overcome it as a primary obstacle. Fatally wounded, the protagonist literally claws her way through the sand in a desperate upward progression toward her also-dying adversary. This Sisyphean aspect contributes an existential notion of ‘futility’ to the situation. Even if the narrative allows the character to reach his/her intended destination, it is all for naught. Lonely Are the Brave is particularly significant in its repositioning of the iconic frontier horseman as the personification of a forfeited ‘pre-modern’ existence in a modern-day context. Now ‘trapped’ in a technologized society, this cowboy misfit (Kirk Douglas) eventually attempts to evade encroaching forces (including a military helicopter) by leading his horse up a series of rugged mountainside switchbacks. Although he finally reaches the top against all odds, the film conveys a similar sense of Sisyphean futility with the climactic death of his horse. In this way, a critique of American postwar modernization is mobilized.